The following originally appeared yesterday in The News & Observer and Charlotte Observer as part of the papers’ series on Fat. It appears today with helpful links to provide you with more information.
Move more and eat better in 2011 using these seven simple strategies:
I once told someone I could tell how I was doing mentally by my last mountain bike ride. If I’d taken an aerobic ride on fire roads — one where I could go relatively fast without paying much attention, one where I could let my mind drift — I was doing pretty good. I was still doing pretty good if the ride was half fire roads, half more aggressive, aggression-relieving singletrack. If the ride was all singletrack, all aggressive, all manic, all fast, well, then the bike was saving me $100 an hour on a leather couch.
Imagine this: You’re at your desk, toiling away when suddenly the boss appears in your cubicle farm, blows a whistle and yells, “All right, people! Time for recess!”
Recess, which was abandoned in our grade schools about the time EOCs began dominating the academic landscape, is being pushed as a key way to help a sluggish, overweight America get its supersized butt in gear. The notion of Instant Recess, which is embraced by the recently formed U.S. National Physical Activity Plan, activity during the workday is better than staying parked in your ergonomic chair for 8 hours. Thus, employers are being encouraged to conduct 10 minute recess sessions where workers can gather and elevate their heart rates in a healthy way. It’s creator, Dr. Toni Yancey, a professor in UCLA’s School of Public Health, is confident Instant Recess will take hold.
It is what folks looking for a workout magic bullet have been hoping to hear since Jane Fonda first implored her legginged followers to “feel the burn,” since we heard our first coach scream the phrase, “No pain, no gain!”
“You want to create that sensation where your body says, ‘Ah … thank you!” I heard that phrase this morning from instructor Julie Ihrig during the cool down of my first Nia workout at the Cary Senior Center. It had been preceded by a string of other phrases that would have made a litany of aerobics instructors, boot camp leaders and personal trainers throughout the land wince: